A Q&A with Chef Gabrielle Hamilton

Epicurious talks to Hamilton about her new memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chefby Lauren Salkeld

T welve years ago, when Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune, a 30-seat bistro in New York's East Village, she'd never run her own business, and despite 20 years in the catering industry, she'd never worked as a restaurant chef. But as she reveals in her recently published memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Hamilton's culinary and personal background proved just the right recipe for running a successful restaurant. In addition to having an interesting story to tell, Hamilton is a talented and accomplished writer—she earned her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Saveur, and GQ. In this interview with Epicurious, Hamilton opens up about her life in food, including what her parents taught her about cooking and hospitality, her idea of the perfect restaurant, and how being a chef is excellent training for having children.

Epicurious: Let's first talk about names. Why did you call your book Blood, Bones & Butter?

Gabrielle Hamilton: There was a cookbook that my dad had when we were kids—it was called Love, Time & Butter, by this chef named Joe Hyde, and I think that's always stuck with me.

And [my] book's organized by those words. So, blood, I was thinking of family and bloodlines, and bones, I guess I was thinking of making one's bones and maybe a few bones to pick. And butter was all the sweet, good stuff.

Epi: And why did you name your restaurant Prune?

GH: That was a childhood nickname. My mom called me Prune when I was a kid. When I opened the restaurant, I ended up cooking what I grew up eating—what I knew very internally and inherently—so I named it after the time when I was called Prune.

Epi: You write a lot about your parents and the parties they hosted. How did each of your parents influence your cooking and your approach to running a restaurant?

GH: I think I am really the recipient of both of their qualities so evenly. My mom, I learned definitely to cook and eat from her. We had to eat very strange things—marrow bones and ratatouille and things that were not so exciting for children at the time, but now I love them and I cook that way. And also from her I learned such a sense of thrift and cleanliness and order. She was running a household with five kids on a very, very unreliable paycheck, so I learned a lot of that from her—structure and thrift and exotic flavors.

And then from my dad I learned just incredible generosity, and that the lighting matters and if people smell smoke it's a good thing and all the sort of mise-en-scène and how to take care of people and how to tell a good story and make sure the wine is flowing. And that's my dad—he's very free-spirited and generous.

Epi: Do you feed your children the same kinds of foods your mother fed you?

GH: I'm falling off my chair in my hotel room right now. You mean my two little children who eat nothing but plain buttered pasta, and drive me crazy? I fed them everything when they were little, but then they got that picky streak going, and I have not been able to break them of it, and it's just excruciating.

Epi: You write that your experiences with extreme hunger were some of the most important credentials for opening your own restaurant. Can you explain this?

GH: I was hungry for a long time without any money and terrified about money while traveling in foreign places where there would be delicious things to eat around me. And I would participate in them and sometimes I couldn't afford to participate in them or I didn't have the right currency. And at the same time, having been away from home for a long time, I started to crave things from home. So I was starving a lot and just really connected to knowing what I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it. My hunger was never vague or general. It was I have to have radishes right now or I have to have salty broth, that kind of particular craving. When I opened the restaurant I wanted to bring that into it—that food you want when you're hungry. I don't eat for entertainment, and I don't eat to have my mind blown. I still eat for total pleasure and satisfaction on a gustatory level, so I wanted a restaurant that would really satisfy you when you arrived with appetite. You know, delicious food that you want to actually eat again and again.

Epi: In the book, you describe Margarita's on the Greek island Sérifos as your "idea of the perfect restaurant." What made it so perfect, and how does Prune compare?

GH: I'll never be able to re-create that. The perfection of that place was that she had maybe four burners and a little ramshackle oasis garden, and she would collect the wild greens from the hilltops and her son would fish. It sounds a little romantic, but it was a life of extreme hard work, and it was close to poverty living that close to the land. So I'm not romanticizing or glamorizing that, by any stretch, but it was such a perfect experience. You would go to her place, and often there would be a language barrier, but you just go and she lifts the lids of the four pots and you just pick whatever is there.

And the other thing is that, as a foreigner, I love how surrendered you are to the ways of the island; you're not able to be in control, and because you don't know the culture or you don't know the language, you're not able to boss the waiter around or complain that your stuff isn't arriving on time. You sort of arrive thankful for whatever arrives at the table. Anyway, I loved what it did to the customer, and I loved what she was producing. So, for me, that was what I wanted to do at Prune. Of course, that would never happen in New York. We have ideas about hospitality and service, and the customer is always right. But we tried—we pushed it a little bit, I think.

Epi: There's a great story in the book about your sister Melissa [part of the Canal House team] making omelettes with André Soltner, and it's clear that you admire Soltner and his contemporaries Jacques Pépin and Alain Sailhac. Whom else do you admire in the culinary world?

GH: I like the real deal. It's not that there's a particular genre of chef that I admire so much, but when they exude and ooze authenticity and they are so clearly expert and master at what they do in their field, they don't come with gimmicks or hairdos or tattoos. They're not about a schtick—they just have pure and thorough knowledge of their craft. I could talk to Adam Perry Lang for hours about meat. And Mario Batali speaks the languages and knows the food, and he really knows what he's doing. Madeleine Kamman, who's sort of a chef's chef—people don't think of her much, but if you read her books, it is extraordinary, her knowledge. She has such a practicality about her. Anyway, I like those real deals.

Epi: At one point in the book, you write that you feel bad for anyone who starts a family and hasn't been a chef or run a restaurant. Why is being a chef such good practice for having a family?

GH: I'm obviously being a little bit facetious when I say that, but it is extraordinary training for parenthood. There are so many similarities—the physical discomfort, the sleepless nights, the long hours—all that sort of physical bodily intrusion is very much like being in a restaurant. There are a lot of bodies on the line, it's hot, you're standing up, you haven't had time to eat—that's very similar to pregnancy.

And when you have the baby, the similarities continue. This little thing that you have to take care of is like a very tender pudding or custard. You have to watch it and pay attention. I think I talk about changing the diaper of a noncompliant kid, because kids don't always just lie there waiting for you to change their diaper—sometimes they fuss and they kick and they don't want it. That's like skinning an eel or trussing a chicken or any of those awkward kitchen tasks. And as my kids get older, I'm realizing that leading a team and being the authority figure in your restaurant and managing a lot of people at different stages of maturity and development is a lot like parenting.

Epi: You write that you love cooking, especially prep cooking, because it keeps your hands occupied but your mind free to sort everything out. Writing is quite different—what did you enjoy about writing this book?

GH: I'm happy to be able to report that there were times when I enjoyed writing the book. When I did my MFA, I didn't understand why my peers were so anxious and depressed. And then of course when I started writing my book, I was deeply having my comeuppance. It can be very difficult, but what I enjoyed very much was when I felt like I was getting it— getting it as it really is—onto the page. What was so delicious about that experience is that I understood that I wasn't drawing attention to myself. I was giving, not taking, as a writer, and that felt really true to my training, my nature. I'm in the service industry. I like to take care of people. It's the same at the restaurant—I don't like food or cooking that calls attention to the chef very much. I want you to just come in, notice that it's tasty, sit down, and enjoy your meal. We don't need to talk about me or my food that much, and I like that in the writing, too.

Epi: You've said that you don't want to open a second restaurant, but what about writing another book?

GH: Well, could I just go to this party first? This question is of course starting to come up. And I love writing, so I will probably do another one. But this was massive. I had to really learn a lot and do the best work I've ever done. And so it's not that I'm tired, but can I ride this for a few minutes before I have to go back in and start working again? I just want to enjoy the party for a little minute.